VI: 11, 12

[Krishna Jaya]

Chapter 6, Verses  =are 11, 12

 

“They are to hold

The senses and the imagination

In check

And keep the mind concentrated

Upon its object.

Practicing meditation

In this manner,

Their minds and hearts

Will become pure.”

 

Swami Shivananda:

 

Through the practice of Yoga meditation, make the mind one-pointed by collecting all of its dissipated rays.  Withdraw it from all sense-objects again and again, and try to fix it steadily upon your point of meditation or center.  Gradually you will gain one-pointedness. 

 

During meditation, when you are deliberately attempting to control the thought-waves, all kinds of worldly thoughts will arise in your mind and cause disturbance.  Old memories of past enjoyments will bubble up and cause the mind to wander.  The trapdoor of the vast subconscious mind will flap open.  Be not discouraged.  Through regular practice, you can purify the subconscious mind and its memories.  You will learn how to clearly observe the rapid shiftings of the mind from one line of thought to another.  Herein lies a chance for you to mold the mind properly, by directing the thoughts and the mental energy into the divine channel.  Be certain of this!

 

The gardener pulls out weeds and throws them away.  In a similar way, you will be able to throw out the useless thoughts and cultivate sublime, divine ones in the garden of your divine nature.  This requires patient effort.  It is a stupendous task indeed.  But to a devoted and faithful Yogi, who has the grace of the Lord, success is assured.  Give a new orientation to your thoughts and feelings by gradual and systematic practice.  You can entirely transmute your worldly nature into the divine nature.

 

Paramahansa Yogananda:

 

Mind passes along with the life current from the brain through the spinal centers and then into the many branches of the nervous system.  The ordinary mind is spoken of as being concentrated on the many points of the flesh, entangled in sensations in the sensory tracts.

 

The mind and life force are principally engaged in looking at duality through the two eyes, listening through the two ears, smelling through the two nostrils, tasting through the tongue and touching through many points of the skin.  The person becomes matter-bound, torn by countless distractions.

 

When Yogis withdraw the mind and life force and gather them together to be concentrated at one point, they begin to experience the omnipresent sphere of the Infinite.  This is what is meant by making the mind one-pointed, the ‘single-eyed’ vision referred to by Jesus.  When Yogis meditate more deeply, they find their minds becoming automatically concentrated at one point.

 

In the beginning, students succeed once in a while in quieting the mind.  By deeper progress, they find that roughly half of the time the mind is concentrated on the divine, and half of the time scattered in bodily and material perceptions.  By further development, they remain in a state of continuous and one-pointed concentration, very seldom experiencing restlessness.  In the final state, the consciousness fully liberated from body identification and ascended into spirit, Yogis become permanently one with the absolute.  This is Self-realization.

 

Sri Eknath Easwaran:

 

Again, Krishna emphasizes the importance of one-pointedness.  Our mind is like a grasshopper, chirring and jumping from one blade of grass to the next.  To train the mind to be one-pointed we need to cultivate the practice of doing only one thing at a time.  People whose attention wanders easily are subject to one of the greatest sources of suffering:  boredom.  One of the effective ways to relieve boredom is to give more concentration to whatever we are doing, because it is the quality of attention we give to a job that makes it interesting.

 

Eckhard Tolle:

 

“Doing one thing at a time” is how a Zen Master defined the essence of Zen.  Doing one thing at a time means to be total in what you do.  This is empowered action.  From another angle, it can be understood as surrendered action, where the absence of distracting thoughts allows one to blend with the universal flow of life.”